The Art of Forgetting

Every time a plane rises something sets off in me. I can't explain it. I suppose all of a sudden I become reflective, pondering the excitement I feel for the next chapter in my life, or the jaded apathy I wonder if I shouldn't feel. Flying is isolating- no phones, no internet, not much movement- and really allows my mind the freedom to play within itself. Perhaps my too-sensitive imagination caused the problem, or maybe it was just growing up and finding something to be afraid of losing, but not too long ago flying began to make me anxious. “Where are the exits? What would I say if I got one phone call? Etc...” Very morbid, I know. Too bad I love traveling so much! I suppose then I figured out that anxiety is best dealt with unconsciously- which is now how I choose to spend most of my flights.

Perhaps this is my way of running away from what de Button describes as his accidentally bringing himself along with him in his travels. I pack everything, literally everything except what I brought, into storage and get hyped up for this adventure only to find I have to deal with my hang-ups along the way? My imagination, my images of this future, somehow included me packing and storing those away as well.

I did not come with many expectations, but I must admit I had a grand ol' time compiling my own subconscious stock-images of beautiful sights: late night dancing to heart-throbbing bass and losing my breath, huge smiles beside new friends I would make, sitting outside and conversing beneath my furrowed intellectual eyebrows with a professor. It rings too true for me that to some the imagination is the best medium for adventure, but as I have mentioned, my decision to come to Berlin was a purposeful crushing of the part of myself that thinks, and thinks, and thinks, and never moves.

On my arrival here I can not really say I wasn't expecting a confrontation with those peripheries of the painting, the things the artist doesn't care to represent. Examples including that my boyfriend of two years, D, and I don't know how to manage adjacent anxieties; I can't seem to keep ahold of my money; the German's really don't care if you couldn't read the sign they'll give you a ticket anyway; and holy hell, it's cold. My expectation of these matters are met with some apathy, some awe.

However, some find the most interesting parts of a pictorial representation lie in the process. Many memories, like pictures, tend to only show you the main, or intended, content. My first moments in Berlin, while getting off the plane, was a delicate portrait of my cigarette smoke disappearing into the sunrise over a foreign cityscape, soundtracked by the tense buzzing of my brain waiting for the moment when we find a cab. That said, I don't remember everything; I don't care to remember everything. It could have been everything I wanted, and for all intensive purposes, it was.